Lake Village Healthcare Center, LLC v. Hatchett

2012 Ark. 223, 407 S.W.3d 521, 2012 WL 1877299, 2012 Ark. LEXIS 254
CourtSupreme Court of Arkansas
DecidedMay 24, 2012
DocketNo. 11-458
StatusPublished
Cited by12 cases

This text of 2012 Ark. 223 (Lake Village Healthcare Center, LLC v. Hatchett) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Arkansas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Lake Village Healthcare Center, LLC v. Hatchett, 2012 Ark. 223, 407 S.W.3d 521, 2012 WL 1877299, 2012 Ark. LEXIS 254 (Ark. 2012).

Opinions

KAREN R. BAKER, Justice.

| Appellants Lake Village Healthcare Center, LLC (Lake Village Healthcare), Perennial Health Care Management, LLC (Perennial Health Care), and James Santarsiero appeal an order of the Chi-cot County Circuit Court striking part of appellants’ answers as a sanction for discovery violations. Arkansas Rule of Appellate Procedure-Civil 2(a)(4) (2011) provides that an appeal may be taken from an order that strikes out an answer or any part of an answer. As this ease presents issues of substantial public interest and significant issues needing clarification or development of the law, our jurisdiction is pursuant to Arkansas Supreme Court Rule l-2(b)(4), (5) (2011). We affirm.

I. Procedural History

Arneacia Hatchett filed a nursing-home, abuse-and-neglect complaint on July 14, 2009, as administrator of the Estate of Richard Hatchett, naming appellants as defendants. | ¡Appellee Richard Hatchett, Jr., was substituted as administrator after the appeal was lodged. Lake Village Healthcare was sued as the licensee of the nursing home where Richard Hatchett (Hatchett) was a resident, Perennial Health Care as its management company controlling the day-to-day operations, and Santarsiero as the owner of both of the entities and as the controller of how care was delivered to residents such as Hatchett. All appellants were sued for wrongful death, negligence, and breach of fiduciary and confidential duty. Lake Village Healthcare was also sued for medical malpractice and violations of the Residents’ Rights Statute. The complaint averred that the actions or inactions of appellants caused Hatchett’s death because they were on notice of the deficient-care conditions within the facility, but they instituted a system of maximizing profit at the expense of delivering necessary care. Appellants filed timely answers.

On December 2, 2009, the circuit court issued a scheduling order setting the case for trial for October 18-22, 2010, with all discovery to be completed within fifteen days of trial. On March 16, 2010, appel-lee propounded discovery, and on April 19, 2010, appellants served their responses and objections. On June 11, 2010, ap-pellee filed a motion to compel, stating that appellants had objected to, not provided a response to, or provided an incomplete response to specific discovery requests. In their response filed on June 29, 2010, appellants stated that they had served supplemental responses since their original response to discovery. They requested that the court deny the motion to compel regarding the production of emails because (1) it placed an undue burden on appellants, (2) the request entailed hundreds of man hours to produce documents of scant value, and (3) appellants had been required to produce ^similar email discovery in other cases at a cost of $100,000. Alternatively, appellants requested that the court order cost-shifting to produce the email discovery.

On July 14, 2010, the circuit court held a hearing on the motion to compel, during which appellee’s Request for Production No. 26 was discussed. This request became known as the email request and stated, “Please produce all e-mails, electronic reports, electronic communications, electronic media, and documents concerning budget, staffing, labor and supplies related to Lake Village [Healthcare] for the year 2007.” The circuit court limited the scope of the email search to December 2006— January 2007. The court ordered compliance within fourteen days. A written order was entered on August 4, 2010; however, it ordered production of all emails sent in 2007.

On August 30, 2010, appellee filed a motion for discovery sanctions asserting that appellants had failed to produce any emails, resulting in appellee canceling the deposition of Santarsiero on two separate occasions. A telephone conference was held on September 13, 2010, where the circuit court stated that it had been generous in reducing the time frame of ap-pellee’s discovery request. Appellee informed the court that appellants had produced 56,000 emails from other nursing-home cases on August 5, 2010, and had failed to identify a single witness for trial until appellee filed a motion in li-mine to exclude appellants’ witnesses. Appellants responded that the emails were produced because they involved the same type of control issues that were at issue in this case. The circuit court stated that the production of unrelated emails from other cases gave the illusion of compliance where there was none. After appellants acknowledged that they did not request an extension of time to [4comply with the order, the circuit court stated that appellants’ lack of good faith was utter and complete, showing no respect for the court’s orders and the restraints the court operated under in getting a trial setting.

On September 14, 2010, appellants filed a response to the motion for discovery sanctions. Attached to the motion was an affidavit executed on September 13, 2010, from Will Belke of Virtual Care Providers, Inc. (VCPI). He attested that VCPI provided email hosting and data storage for Perennial Health Care and Lake Village Healthcare. He stated that he was contacted on July 15, 2010, and requested to start the process of gathering relevant data. Belke said that VCPI only had the ability to recover data up to six days and recovery beyond that period would require outsourcing to third parties. He said that to recover data from six days would cost approximately $4,800 and then an outside forensics team, with its own separate charges, would have to mine the data for specific responses to inquiries.

On October 7, 2010, the circuit court entered an order, stating that at the hearing held on July 14, 2010, it materially narrowed the scope of appellee’s production request and ordered appellants to produce emails and documents by July 28, 2010. Yet, appellants did not notify the court they were experiencing difficulty in complying with the order until the hearing on September 13, 2010. The order further noted that the discovery was propounded on March 16, 2010, and witness names were not furnished until September 2010. The order advised that the court was considering sanctioning appellants for failure to comply with discovery and its order by limiting proof on the liability issues.

|5On October 15, 2010, a telephone conference was held where discovery issues were addressed. Appellants agreed that no emails had been produced. Appellants asserted they had ordered the emails but could not apprise the court when the emails could be produced.

During the hearing, appellants also argued that the written order entered on August 4, 2010, was in conflict with the court’s oral ruling. Appellants asserted that the oral ruling required them to produce two months of emails, whereas the written order required twelve months. The court stated that it was unaware that the written order was inconsistent with its oral ruling and did not remember receiving a letter from appellants’ counsel concerning the conflict. Additionally, the court questioned why the issue had not been brought to the court’s attention during the September telephone conference. After hearing additional arguments of counsel, the court struck part of appellants’ answers.1 Specifically, it struck appellants’ responses to the complaint’s Residents’ Rights claim, negligence claim, and factual averment that appellants’ conduct was reckless.

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Bluebook (online)
2012 Ark. 223, 407 S.W.3d 521, 2012 WL 1877299, 2012 Ark. LEXIS 254, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/lake-village-healthcare-center-llc-v-hatchett-ark-2012.